This might be a super dumb question.
I recently made up a battery pack for one of my HP calcs.
The replacement batteries were of a very much higher mAhr capacity.
How can I tell when they are full?
If I get a voltmeter can I measure the voltage and assume they are full when the voltage gets to 2.4v (2*1.2v in series}?
Thank you.

There's no easy way to tell if the batteries are fully charged. Output voltage on NiCD cells is fairly constant until they near exhaustion. You can trickle-charge the cells at 0.1c for about 14-16 hours. Charging them at a faster rate requires a temperature sensor that can detect increases in cell temperature that occur when a cell is nearing full charge.

Many conditionals apply to the following general statement: Ni-cads are considered to be fully charged when they reach approximately 1.35-1.4 vdc per cell. Not perfect for many reasons but a good place to begin discussions. 1.1 vdc is (generally) considered to be the bottom of the discharge curve, that is when it begins to fall like a rock.

Another (inaccurate) way to assume full charge is (cell capacity/charge rate) = time required. For example: an original 600 mah classic nicad pack requires 10 hours at the standard 82002 charger rate of 60ma. Change those to 1100mah cells and it *should* require ~18 hours to reach full charge. Extrapolate to suit.